


one hundred years of war

by bethejerktomybitch



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brainwashing, Domestic Violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Hydra (Marvel), Implied/Referenced Torture, Minor Character Death, Physical Abuse, Psychological Torture, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 19:40:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15647610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethejerktomybitch/pseuds/bethejerktomybitch
Summary: The story of Hydra, told through the eyes of a girl who had to grow up too soon.





	one hundred years of war

**1914**

The world is burning, and Elise falls in love.

 

In a fleeting moment of self-awareness, she realizes that she is being selfish – laughing and flirting and dancing while blood soaks the earth – but she is the youngest child of five and her parents can never put enough food on the table and Elise is smart enough to know that her only way of escaping her very own hell is marrying someone who can take her away.

 

Werner appears like a knight out of a fairytale. He is a young and ambitious scientist who avoided being drafted because of an old knee injury and he is the most charming man she’s ever met. He takes her to dances and buys her flowers and they are married four months after they’ve first met.

 

For a while, Elise is very happy.

 

**1919**

She gives birth to her daughter alone and in the dark, bearing the pain silently so Werner won’t hear her. When the whole thing is over, she presses the tiny, bloody newborn to her chest, her eyes burning with tears, and waits for her to stop breathing. They always do.

 

But this time, it’s different. The baby keeps breathing. She fights. She lives.

 

Elise names her Lida and swears to herself that she will protect her. She will never let her go through the same horrors she is going through every day.

 

**1924**

She fails.

 

**1925**

There is another child that lives, a boy. Werner names him – Frederick, after his own father – and he goes easy on him, for which Elise is thankful, but that also means that she and Lida are bearing the brunt of his anger.

 

**1926**

 

The nurse at the local hospital knows them by name. She once asks Elise why she doesn’t simply leave. Nobody realizes that it isn’t that easy. Without Werner, there wouldn’t be any food on the table. Without Werner, she and her kids would be homeless. And there are still those rare moments where she recognizes the man she fell in love with, the charming and gentle man who proposed to her with one hundred roses, one for every day they’d known.

 

**1933**

Lida is fourteen. She meets a boy named Karl in the village who shows her his father’s car and kisses her on the mouth. When her father finds out, he beats her so bad she can barely stand for days.

 

That is the same year her father starts working for the Nazi party and tall men in uniforms who slap her butt and call her sweetie start coming to their house for top-secret discussions that last well into the night. Sometimes the men come to her room afterwards. It doesn’t take her long to learn that the best thing to do during those nights is to do everything the men tell her to. If she manages to make them happy, her father will usually lay off of her for a few days.

 

**1935**

She is sixteen. Her father is barely home now and when he is, he talks about sub-humans and living space and the looming war. Her mother, on the other hand, is always home but never leaves her bed anymore. Lida does her best to give Frederick something of a childhood in the midst of the hell that is their home. At night, she cries herself to sleep.

 

**1937**

Lida never really understood what her father does for a living. When she finally does, she wishes she never would have.

 

Her father takes them through three different security checkpoints before they enter a building made out of grey concrete. It’s bustling with men in lab coats and uniforms, and Lida knows more than a few of them from long and dark nights in her room.

 

They are taken to three different rooms. Frederick fights for a moment, holding her hand as tight as he can, but he lets go when their father slaps him across the face with the back of his hand. There are tears in his eyes when he is dragged away and Lida feels like she is going to throw up. She doesn’t bother looking to her mother for support. The woman has given up on life a long time ago.

 

A young man in a lab coat straps her to a gurney. Lida lies there, trembling, for what seems like an eternity, and then she hears the scream. It pierces through the concrete walls of the building and she would know the voice anywhere. It is a scream full of agony, a wordless scream that shakes her to her very core.

 

“Freddie!” she screams, pulling on her restraints with all her strength. “Frederick! Frederick!” But the restraints won’t give in and so she can only lie there and listen to her little brother, the person she loves most in the world, scream in indescribable pain until the screams suddenly stop and a part of her just knows that he’s gone.

 

There are no tears, no words. Her father comes in, smiles at her, a syringe in his hand. “I must say, my dear, your brother was rather disappointing.” he says. “I really thought my serum would work on him, since his genes are closest to mine. Well, maybe it’ll work on you. You’ve always been strong. Not like your mother, that pathetic woman.”

 

“I hate you.” Lida whispers. “I hate you.”

 

He only laughs. “I know you do, dear.” Then he leans down and injects her with the syringe. His voice is the last thing she hears before she blacks out.

 

“Hail Hydra.”

 

**1938**

She wakes in a cold room, strapped to a chair. There is pain. She doesn’t know why, but then she remembers. Frederick is gone. They murdered him. A scream that sounds like the cry of a wounded animal forces its way out of her mouth.

 

A man enters. She knows him, knows the cocky smile on his face. It disgusts her that she is actually related to him.

 

“Soldier?” he asks. She spits in his face. “I hate you.” she whispers hoarsely. He slaps her across the face. “You are a weapon.” he growls. “Weapons don’t feel. Weapons comply. Do you understand me?”

 

She grits her teeth and says nothing. When they lock her in the machine once again, she holds on to Frederick’s name.

 

**1939**

More pain. She feels empty. Someone is gone, she knows that, but she can’t really remember who. Someone she loves, she thinks. Is she supposed to love? Can she even love?

 

The man again. “Soldier?” She turns her face away. He grabs her hair and yanks her towards him. His face is only inches from hers when he says: “If I have to fry your brain a thousand times more for you to comply, believe me, I will.”

 

The machine burns through her skull, her skin, sets fire to her blood. She clings to the empty hole inside of her, the proof that she is more than what they want her to be, more than just a weapon. If only she remembers, they won’t be able to break her.

 

She remembers. She remembers.

 

She forgets.

 

**1940**

The pain is a distant thought. It’s not of any danger to the mission, so it doesn’t matter to her. When the man enters, she stands up straight like a good soldier is supposed to do.

 

“Soldier?” he asks. She raises her chin, grits her teeth. This is what she was made to do, this is all she is.

 

Her voice is unwavering. “Ready to comply.”

 

**1941**

As soon as they’ve broken her, they train her. They put her into a room with twelve heavily armed Hydra agents, tie her hands behind her back and then turn out the lights. When the lights come back on, she stands in a bloody sea of bodies, breathing heavily.

 

Her handler smiles. “You’re ready for your first mission, Soldier.” he says. He hands her a grainy black and white picture of a man in a uniform. “We want him gone.” he says. “You have three days.”

 

It only takes her two.

 

**1943**

There is always another mission.

 

 

When they let her sleep, she sees the faces of those she killed, eyes dark with fear. Once she wakes up crying and they put her in the machine until she screams herself raw. After that, she doesn’t really sleep anymore.

 

**1944**

 

Her handlers call her the first Winter Soldier. She briefly wonders if that means there will be more of her, more assets. Right now, it’s only her, always her.

 

**1945**

One handler tells her to kill the man they call Captain America. Another one tells her not to. She stands still, confused. Her conditioning doesn’t tell her what to do in this kind of situation. It doesn’t tell her how to deal with this. The handlers are screaming, at each other and at her, and something inside of her snaps.

 

The next thing she remembers is pain. She is lying on the ground of her cell, shivering and covered in blood. A man is standing in front of the cell door, looking down at her. She thinks that she should know him, but her thoughts are a mess and it’s hard enough to focus on breathing.

 

“What a shame.” the man says. “You tore two of our best people apart. We can’t have a rogue asset. They’re talking about retiring you.”

 

He chuckles. “By retiring you, of course, they mean killing you. But don’t worry. I won’t let them destroy my masterpiece.”

 

She bites her lip until she can taste blood and doesn’t tell him that she’d prefer being dead.

 

**1946**

While one of the Hydra doctors is stitching up the bullet wound in her stomach that she got on her last mission, two armed guards drag in a man. He seems barely conscious and badly healed scars cover the stump where his left arm once was. She wonders why he’s still alive. Hydra’s prisoners usually don’t live all that long.

 

Later, they throw him into the cell with her. He presses into a corner, his breathing shallow, and the gaze from his pale blue eyes finds hers. “Help me.” he whispers, in a language that she knows but that is not the one her handlers use. “Please, help me.”

 

She swallows and turns her head away. Suddenly, she feels like she’s going to throw up.

 

**1947**

The next time she sees him, they have given him a metal arm. They keep him chained to the wall in the cell next to hers. Sometimes, when they put him into the machine, she can hear him scream through the concrete walls.

 

She wonders what his name is. She wonders if she had a name once. When she asks one of her handlers about it, they put her into the machine until she doesn’t remember ever asking the question.

 

**1955**

In the room with the screens where they give her her targets, the man with the metal arm stands next to her. His blue eyes, full of pain and desperation when he was in her cell, are ice-cold and dead now. She wonders if it really took Hydra that long to make him comply.

 

The handlers give them two photos, a man and a woman. They also give each of them a gun and lead them to a helicopter on the roof. The man takes over the controls and they depart the base silently, neither of them saying a word.

 

In Belarus, they kill the couple in their sleep after taking out their security team. A baby is crying in the next room over and suddenly a picture flashes before her eyes, of herself holding a toddler in her lap. She shakes her head and it disappears, but it leaves her with a bitter taste inside of her mouth.

 

**1962**

Once, she sees him kill one of his handlers. The Hydra agent screams at her to stop him, but she only stands there motionless and lets it happen. She is punished for that, of course, but she doesn’t really regret it.

 

**1964**

There are more Winter Soldiers, stronger and more ruthless than her and the metal-armed man. Hydra uses the two of them for what they call training purposes but what is really just having them beat up by the other soldiers.

 

Once, after a particularly rough training session, they are locked in a room together. She can barely move and is pretty sure that she has internal bleeding. The man doesn’t look much better, his face bruised so badly it’s almost unrecognizable. The doctors will probably make sure they don’t die, but they’ll let them suffer first. That’s what they always do.

 

Something touches her hand. She flinches violently and has to fight to suppress a whimper of pain at the sudden movement. When she turns her head, she sees that the man’s flesh hand is resting on top of hers. He is looking at her, eyes piercing into hers like he can see inside of her.

 

Neither of them says a word, but for a moment she feels almost human.

 

**1970**

They work well together. Hydra must think so, too, because they frequently send them on missions together. Sometimes, in cheap motel rooms or stolen cars where no one will ever hear them, they talk. Nothing much, just trivial things like the state of their equipment or their targets, but it’s enough to give her a small strand of humanity to cling to.

 

**1979**

She has no idea how long she’s been in the cold when they her wake up.

 

They give her her uniform, her weapons, tell her to suit up. Then they lead her to the room with the screens where the man is already waiting. For the briefest second, his eyes meet hers.

 

Four of their handlers are there as well. There is a picture of a man in a uniform that she believes is American on one of the screens. “This is Major Robert Hall.” one of the handlers says. “Find him and his associates and take them out. Leave no witnesses.”

 

In the helicopter, as soon as they’re far away enough from the Hydra base, the man looks at her. “This is going to be a long mission.” he says quietly. For the first time, she realizes that his accent is American.

 

She wonders if where they’re going was once his home.

 

**1980**

He was right. The mission lasts for months, takes them through the entire United States. They drive along mile-long highways in stolen cars and she feels more human than she ever has.

 

Eventually, they end up in New York, Brooklyn, where one of the target’s associates is hiding out. It seems like an easy task, just break into the apartment and kill whoever’s inside, but when they stand in front of the building, the man suddenly freezes. She realizes that he is shaking.

 

“What is it?” she asks, quietly, hesitantly. The man turns to face her and his eyes find hers. There is something in them, something that a soldier is not supposed to feel. “I… I remember this.” he whispers.

 

She flinches and her heart skips a beat. It’s the word they’re never supposed to use, the word that will instantly get them into the machine. _Remember._ Weapons don’t have memories. Weapons don’t remember, because they don’t need to. Yet the man remembers and suddenly she remembers too. They’re not weapons. They were human, once. They were human and they had memories and Hydra took that from them.

 

Her hands are trembling, the gun in them suddenly useless. “We…” she chokes out. “They…” The man nods silently. There’s fear on his face, disbelief, confusion, but also something else. Determination, maybe?

 

He holds out his normal hand until she can almost touch him. “We could run.” he says hoarsely.

 

She swallows, hard. The gun clatters to her feet, the sound echoing loudly in the alley. “Yes.” she whispers, and then she takes his hand.

 

**1981**

She learns that his name is James, and that she’s Lida. She learns that she had a brother, once, whom Hydra took from her. She learns that they both have pasts and memories and feelings and they’re human. She learns to slowly but steadily fight off the conditioning they spent years implanting her with.

 

And in those dark nights when James wakes up screaming for someone called Steve, she learns to hold him close.

 

(But of course, she also learns that no matter how far you run, Hydra’s always right behind you.)

 

**1982**

They catch up to them in a small, run-down hotel on the outskirts of Moscow.

 

Lida is asleep when they come. James’s voice wakes her, shaking with panic, and he pushes a gun into her hand before she’s even really awake. When the door to their room is kicked in by men in uniforms, their eyes meet briefly. Dozens of unspoken words pass between them in the space of a single elongated second and Lida tries to burn the memory into her mind, tries to bury it so deep Hydra won’t ever be able to take it away from her, because a part of her knows that this is the last moment they will share as themselves.

 

They put up a desperate fight, cut short by a man’s deep voice echoing through the small room. In quick succession, he spits out a string of Russian words that remind her of the ones her handlers use to make her comply, and she is half expecting the emptiness to fill her up, to twist her mind until she can’t do anything but obey any orders they give her, but it doesn’t and that is when realization hits her.

 

She spins around and looks at James. His face is empty, unmoving, and suddenly she is shivering. The man speaks again, sadistic amusement in his voice. “Subdue her, Soldier.” And then James lunges at her.

 

She doesn’t fight back. She just closes her eyes and holds on to the memory of that single moment, replays it again and again in her mind until his metal fist hits her square in the face and her world goes black.

 

**1983**

They put her in the machine for what seems like an eternity.

 

At first, she whispers James’s name over and over, wonders where he is, wonders why she can’t hear him scream. Later, his name slips away but she still knows that he exists and she cares about him. She still remembers that one moment.

 

Until, just like that, she doesn’t.

**1984**

She wakes up screaming a name that tastes bitter on her tongue and a man slaps her across the face hard enough to have her spitting blood. “Get over it, soldier.” he growls. The machine looms behind him, and so she does what she’s told.

 

**1990**

The next mission, she lies perfectly still with her finger hovering above the trigger and suddenly remembers a man who was a better sniper than she is, whose face would go blank with concentration, and who would flinch ever so slightly when his bullet found its target.

 

She misses that shot, and Hydra breaks her ribs as punishment.

 

**1998**

The same old question, familiar in a strange sort of way. “Soldier?” For a moment she wants to say no, spit in their face and murder them for what they’re making her do, but the thought vanishes as quickly as it has come.

 

“Ready to comply.” she says.

 

**2002**

There is a man who she tortures to get his daughter to talk, and the vague sick feeling in her stomach burns with the rest of her when they erase everything.

 

**2007**

She spends months acting as a bodyguard for the new head of Hydra, Alexander Pierce, and tries to kill him at the end of it, hate flooding her body out of nowhere and making her lunge for his throat. Later she’s locked in a cell, and hears them talk in low voices.

 

“All she’s ever done is give us problems, more even than the other Assets. Maybe it’s time to retire her. We can’t have her attacking our own people, or possibly going for another escape.”

 

The next voice that speaks is Pierce’s and it’s firm, reminding her uncomfortably of someone she can’t quite name. “No. We’re not retiring her. She’s the original Winter Soldier. We can’t destroy Hydra’s masterpiece.”

 

The words – _Hydra’s masterpiece_ – hit her like a sledgehammer and she almost welcomes the machine after that.

 

**2012**

She stands in a hallway in Germany and this time it doesn’t come back to her in drops, but as a waterfall. She doesn’t know who thought sending her to the house she originally grew up in, back when she was still person, was a good idea, but here she is and the sheer flood of memories almost brings her to her knees.

 

 _Lida. My name is Lida._ She whispers the name until she can almost taste it, and when another name comes back to her she whispers it too, the shape of it almost painfully familiar as her lips move around it. _James._

Lida turns away from the door of the man she is supposed to kill but doesn’t drop her gun, only holds it tighter. This time, she is not going to run.

 

This time, she is going to bring the whole damn thing down.

 

**2013**

The Hydra base Lida takes down in Prague is easy, only a couple of rather haphazardly posted agents. They all begin to talk at the merest threat of torture, willingly giving her whatever she needs in the vain hope she will let them live. There is a picture of James in one of the files and that night, when she dozes for an hour on a plane to the States, she dreams of his cold, dead eyes when they made him subdue her and awakes shaking.

 

**2014**

By the time she finds him, it’s too late.

 

They have already sent him after Captain America, have already set the whole reveal of their true power in motion, but just as going back to her childhood home was stronger than the best their machine could do, so is seeing one’s childhood best friend. And so when Lida watches James fight the Captain and the Widow on the bridge, the look in his eyes is one she knows, and she almost smiles.

 

After the fight, when Hydra is in ruins and he emerges from the wreckage of the Helicarrier, soaking wet after he pulled the Captain from the river, she is standing there. He is still holding his gun and raises it when he sees her, but she doesn’t make any move to defend herself.

 

Instead, she holds out her hand, thinks of that same scene unfolding so many years ago in Brooklyn. “We could run.” she says.

 

James looks at her, his eyes wide, and then he drops his gun and seals Hydra’s fate once and for all.

 

“Yes.” he says, and takes her hand.


End file.
